World’s Top 13 Tech Billionaires under 35: Meet the Richest people

Technology has fundamentally transformed almost every aspect of our lives. From ordering food to online shopping to sharing pictures online, there is an app for everything! Technology has become so integrated into our daily lives that we barely notice how much it has changed the way we think, work, socialize and play.

But developing such life-changing technology is no easy task. The brainstorming and effort behind it have not just changed our lives but also the lives of people who came up with it.

The question that who is the richest person in the world ever might have come to your mind many times. But, while you were thinking about it, some people were working to be on the list of Richest person in the world. To our astonishment, there are people who became billionaires even before they reach 35. Hence, it becomes our duty to bring you 13 of the richest tech billionaires in the world.

13. Sachin Bansal: 34

12.Eduardo Saverin: 33

11. Cheng Wei: 32

10. Nathan Blecharczyk: 32

9. Binny Bansal: 34

8. Elizabeth Holmes: 31

7. Dustin Moskovitz: 31

6. Wang Yue: 32

5. Bobby Murphy: 26

4. Patrick Collison: 27

3. John Collison: 26

2. Mark Zuckerberg: 31

1. Evan Spiegel: 25

Full details: Richest Tech Billionaires Under 35

1. Evan Spiegel: 25

Residence: Los Angeles, California

Estimated wealth: $1.9 billion

The Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel at 25 is the youngest top richest billionaires in the world. His charmed childhood afforded him the seed funding and connections to launch the photo-sharing app with 2 of his Stanford classmates.

As a student, Spiegel has done an unpaid internship at Red Bull and other companies whose profit he has already crossed with his $1.9 billion net worth. While studying, he had proposed the product design of Snapchat for a class project and faced ridicule from his classmates.

In 2012, Spiegel left Stanford shortly before completing his degree, to focus on Snapchat. The 25-year-old billionaire rejected buyout offers from Google and Facebook as he believes that trading in his business for a short-term gain isn’t a good idea.

2. John Collison: 26

Residence: San Francisco, California

Estimated wealth: $1 billion

This Irish billionaire is a Harvard dropout who co-founded an online payment company called stripe, with his brother in 2011. Brothers Patrick and John Collison founded Stripe in 2011 which has PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Tesla’s Elon Musk as it’s investors.

This 27-year-old billionaire had an early beginning with him setting up Shuppa- an auctions payment firm, just when he was 16 years old. The raging success of this firm gave them a profit of €3.8million before it was sold off.

Later when John was a student at Harvard, the brothers came up with a brilliant plan to simplify online payments which resulted in Stripe.

3. Bobby Murphy: 26

Residence: Venice, California

Estimated wealth: $1.8 billion

This 26-year-old billionaire may not be seen as much as the other co-founder of Snapchat but has been the brain behind the app. Spiegel and Murphy lived across the hall from each other in Stanford and were both members of Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Together they came up with Future Freshman- a failed startup that gave students advice on how to apply to colleges.

Originally named ‘Picaboo’ when launched in 2011, Snapchat creator Murphy became one of the youngest billionaires in the world just 5 years out of college. In the limited interviews he has given, he described how he and Spiegel weren’t ‘cool’ and hence they decided to build things to become cool.

4. Patrick Collison: 27

Residence: San Francisco, California

Estimated wealth: $1.0 billion

The Collison brothers are famous for turning 7 lines of code into a billion-dollar startup. Patrick Collision showed his brilliance at an early age with him being named ‘Young Scientist of the Year’ for developing an artificial intelligence and programming language system when he was just 16.

Patrick and his brother would develop iPhone apps in their spare time such as the offline version of Wikipedia for $8, which became a big hit. In 2009, Patrick and his brother dropped out of college to set up their now billion dollar company: stripe, which landed him on lists of richest top ten in the world.

5. Mark Zuckerberg: 31

Residence: Palo Alto, California

Estimated wealth: $45 billion

The CEO and co-founder of Facebook, at 23 became the youngest self-made billionaire in history. As a student at Harvard, Zuckerberg had the “programming prodigy” reputation. He initially created a website called Face mash that let students choose the best looking person from pictures.

However, the college shut the website soon as it had prevented students from accessing the internet by creating too much traffic on the Harvard network.

Much later, Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to complete his project and ended up receiving an honorary degree from Harvard in 2017 and being on the richest tech billionaires list.

6. Elizabeth Holmes: 31

Residence: Palo Alto, California

Estimated wealth: $4.3 billion

Holmes displayed her potential right from her freshman year in 2003 at Stanford by patenting a wearable drug delivery patch. In 2004, she dropped out and used her tuition as funding for Theranos: a healthcare technology company.

Her decision to forgo her career in engineering for an entrepreneurial path made her one of the youngest female billionaires in America at the age of 31. Her philanthropic efforts include helping draft and pass a law which lets patients pay and obtain lab tests without having healthcare or insurance approval, in Arizona.

7. Dustin Moskovitz: 31

Residence: San Francisco, California

Estimated wealth: $10 billion

Moskovitz was one of the 4 friends who founded Facebook in 2004 and was the first CTCO of it. This billionaire along with his friends intended the website to be an online directory to help residential students identify those of other residences.
However, in 2008, Moskovitz announced his new business venture Asana with an engineering manager at Facebook.

He was also the biggest investor in Path: a mobile photo sharing site that was run by another former Facebook employee; David Morin. Reportedly, Moskovitz’s advice to reject a $100 million offer from Google helped Morin’s site grow and prosper.

When it comes to philanthropy, Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna founded Good Ventures: a philanthropic organization which donated $100 million towards initiatives against Malaria, Schistosomiasis etc.

8. Wang Yue: 32

Residence: Shanghai, China

Estimated wealth: $1.0 billion

This former executive at 51.com in China, Wang Yue is now called China’s web game billionaire. CEO of Kingnet Technology in Shanghai, Wang transformed Kingnet into a leading mobile game developer.

He’s also known as one of the world’s fastest self-made billionaires as his gaming firm started in 2008 with a capital of $15,000 and then experienced explosive growth with Wang being named as one of the youngest billionaires in 2015 at the age of 29.

9. Cheng Wei: 32

Residence: Beijing, China

Estimated wealth: $1.0 billion

This billionaire had quite an unusual career after his graduation: he worked as an assistant to a foot massage company! A year later in 2005, he joined Alibaba as a salesperson. In his 6 years, Cheng became the sales manager of the northern region of China. Later he moved to Alipay; China’s largest online payment platform where he rose as the youngest regional manager.

In 2012, Cheng launched ‘Didi Dache’- a hail a cab service and later merged the company with its rival to become ‘Didi Chuxing’. Didi Chuxing went on to acquire all the assets of the Uber (Chinese division) including its data for operation, brand and business operations within China.

At the age of 32, Cheng Wei has a net worth of 1 billion and is one of the top richest billionaires under 35.

10. Nathan Blecharczyk: 32

Residence: San Francisco, California

Estimated wealth: $3.6 billion

Billionaire Blecharczyk’s brilliance shone even as early as high school when he created his own web hosting business that provided various services to spammers. While attending Harvard, he continued writing programs and made enough money to pay his tuition before abandoning this business venture to focus on his studies.

After graduating from Harvard, Blecharczyk worked as a product manager at Microsoft. This is where Hoe Gebbia- his former roommate and him co-founded Airbnb that helps you book restaurants, homes, and experiences all over the world. As the current CTO, he is one of the top wealthiest tech personalities in the world.

11. Eduardo Saverin: 33

Residence: Singapore

Estimated wealth: $5.6 billion

While this tech billionaire was undergraduate at Harvard, he took advantage of Brazil’s relaxed trading regulations and made a profit of $300,000 with a strategic investment in the oil industry. During his freshman year, he met Mark Zuckerberg and they both worked together on Facebook.

Saverin may no longer be involved with Facebook after the legal disputes between its co-founders, he still holds a small share in Facebook. His philanthropic efforts include ‘Aporta’ which is an online portal for charity and other related work, that he co-founded in 2010.

He is also now an active angel investor and director of Singapore based property sales and rental company 99.

12. Binny Bansal: 34

Residence: Bangalore, India

Estimated wealth: $1.4 billion

Billionaire Binny Bansal started his career by working for Sarnoff Corporation where he developed a sensor device for cars which would indicate a warning by beeping if a car changes lanes without giving an indication.

He then joined Amazon, where he and Sachin Bansal brainstormed before quitting in a couple of months. Their initial business idea was to launch a comparison search engine. But seeing a gap in the Indian e-commerce market, they took a leap of faith and found Flipkart.

Claiming the top position in India’s internet retailers, Flipkart has landed both the founders on the list of top tech billionaires in the world.

13. Sachin Bansal: 34

Residence: Bangalore, India

Estimated wealth: $1.4 billion

After completing his degree, this young billionaire started his career in Techspan company where he worked for a few months. In 2006, Bansal took up the job of a senior software engineer in Amazon where he worked with Binny Bansal.

Both of them decided to quit 6 months later and founded Flipkart in 2006. From their apartment in Bangalore and an investment of $6,500 they launched Flipkart and would deliver books on their scooters.

The humble beginning leads to him being on various top wealthiest tech personalities list.

Final Words:

These examples show us that we are all just an idea away from a billion-dollar business idea that can land us on the richest tech billionaires list. It’s never been a good idea to bet against the rapid growth and influence of technology. Tomorrow’s list of best future tech billionaires will be those whose ideas will transform traditional industries- energy, transportation, finance, healthcare and manufacturing to serve earth’s growing population.

But, just an idea isn’t the only thing that will make you a billionaire, to work for that idea is the other. If you have any such idea, you can share with us here. No one knows when one of you could be there on the list before you turn 35.